Part II: Diego

"May I sit here?"

The boy across from Diego seemed almost to cringe. He shifted in his seat uncomfortably and acquiesced. "I'm sorry. I mean. Sure. Please do. It's not taken."

Diego remembered the old times. Back when flying meant you got to eye a few stewardesses in short skirts! He coughed. The woman asking to sit next to the boy seemed attractive enough. Maybe if she lost those glasses...they reminded him too much of his second wife, Sarah, killed in a car accident...Christ!...almost four years ago, now. Diego shook his head. He had really loved Sarah and when he thought of her now he couldn't seem to stop fixating on the tragedy. Though he kept her alive in his head she was still pulling him downward into despair, begging him to join her. A divorce would have been preferrable to her senseless death. At least then he could have wallowed in depression and anger over the severing of a once-strong emotional bond, instead of Sarah's rise to stardom as a statistic.

Diego closed the book he was reading and put it on his lap. The somewhat attractive young woman now sat across from him and was having some kind of spirited conversation about the Odyssey or something with the boy. Damn, he thought, he hadn't read that book in decades.

Ah, Sarah. He remembered when the big events seemed so big. Stealing the keys to Dad's '67 Triumph at sixteen and plowing through a field, blowing out a tire. The old man had been pissed. Shocked, too. Not as shocked as when Diego brought home a pregnant girl from college one Christmas and they announced their engagement. Poor Kathy. Both of them had fucked that up pretty well.

It's strange how when the big events come and go they don't seem so big anymore. The birth of his son, John, for example. Diego had stood next to Kathy for the intensive nineteen hours of labor thinking, "I thought I was supposed to be nervous about this."

He thought the same thing when he'd killed a burglar fifteen years later. Kathy had argued against him having a gun in the house, but after insisting she had finally given in. Looking back, Diego didn't know if it had been the right move. Sure, he had been able to shoot the intruder, but the aftermath of that night only helped to further the rift that had grown between him and Kathy. John had never looked at him quite the same after that. He distanced himself from his father. Kathy blamed him for John's failings in school and she left him, taking John with her, soon after.

Diego knew his and Kathy's separation had been the best thing for the two of them, but John's leaving hurt him more than he could have ever anticipated. His hands shook; he thought of John every day even though so many years had passed and his heart was racing at the anticipation of seeing him again when the plane landed. If only Sarah could be here, too, to be at John's graduation with them. He pulled out his wallet, looked at her picture and closed his eyes.